1930: The Mysterious Mr Quin / Harley Quin

Publisher: William Collins & Sons, 1930 (UK);   Dodd, Mead & Co, 1930 (US)

Series: Mr Quin

Category: Short stories

Cross refs: Three Act Tragedy; Murder on the Mews; Lord Edgware Dies; Towards Zero

Just as it is hard to describe a Tommy and Tuppence story without using the word ‘romp’, so too it is hard to speak of The Mysterious Mr Quin without employing the term ‘atmosphere’. And, as Mr Quin himself proclaims, ‘Atmosphere is always valuable’. This collection of short stories has more of a supernatural and ethereal quality than Christie’s other works, with many of the tales centring on tragic misunderstandings and lost loves, rather than crime per se. And while, in his stories, Hercule Poirot debunks any supernatural or superstitious explanations, the otherworldly Mr Quin is the personification of them. This enigmatic character acts as a catalyst for the truth to surface – as Mr Satterthwaite observes:

His presence is a sign that things are going to happen, because he is there, strange revelations come to light, discoveries are made. And yet – he himself takes no part in the proceedings.

Mr Quin’s role is almost as a life coach, encouraging other characters to re-examine what they already know in order to explore unresolved events and confront emotions. He ‘speaks the cue’, while the other ‘players’ act out their parts.

Alongside Mr Quin comes the aforementioned Mr Satterthwaite, the narrator of the piece. Mr Satterthwaite, we are told, ‘was abnormally interested in the comedies and tragedies of his fellow men’. ‘All his life … he had sat in the front row of the stalls watching various dramas of human nature unfold before him.’ As Christie wrote in her autobiography, Mr Satterthwaite plays the role of ‘Mr Quin’s emissary’.[1] Throughout the stories within this collection, however, this emissary goes from spectator to actor.  

Much of this book is couched in theatrical language, which is perhaps unsurprising given the nature of the Harlequin on which the character of Mr Harley Quin is based. In the seventeenth century, the Harlequin was the clown of the piece, the best-known of the comic servant characters from the Italian commedia dell’arte, but, by the eighteenth century, in the derivative Harlequinade, he had become a romantic hero (fig. 1). In fact, Mr Quin name checks the Harlequinade – in which the lovers Harlequin and Columbine are pursued by the foolish Pantalone and the pining, sad clown, Pierrot:

I must recommend the Harlequinade to your attention. It is dying out nowadays, but it repays attention, I assure you. Its symbolism is a little difficult to follow – but the immortals are always immortal, you know.

In the art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Harlequin evolved into a symbol of suppressed sadness, a memento mori and, in some cases, the death of innocence (fig. 2). It is perhaps appropriate then, that Mr Quin always stands ‘for the same things: he was a friend of lovers, and connected with death’.[2]

The Harlequin is recognisable by his chequered costume, and, in Christie’s stories, various plays of light cast the character of Mr Harley Quin ‘so he appeared … to be dressed in every colour of the rainbow’, while leaving ‘his face in shadow, almost as though he wore a mask’. The inn that Mr Satterthwaite visits – The Bells and Motley – is also a nod to the Harlequin’s multicoloured attire and jester-like bells. This is not the only establishment named by Christie in a nod to Mr Quin’s character – the Italian for Harlequin is Arlecchino, which doubles as the name of the restaurant frequented by Mr Satterthwaite, where he regularly encounters Mr Harley Quin.

Christie’s fascination with the character of the Harlequin originated with a set of Dresden figures that belonged to her mother (fig. 3).[3] The figures, which included Harlequin, Columbine and Pierrot, represented the Italian commedia dell’arte, and first featured in Christie’s series of poems, ‘A Masque from Italy’, published in her 1925 poetry collection The Road of Dreams. This work is referenced more directly in The Mysterious Mr Quin when, in the story ‘Harlequin’s Lane’, the lyrics of the ‘old Irish ballad’ are actually taken from Christie’s poem ‘Dark Sheila’ (1919), which also featured in The Road of Dreams.

The Harlequin character surfaces again in ‘The Affair at the Victory Ball’ – first published in the Sketch in March 1923, and later in Poirot’s Early Cases (1974). Here, the characters dress in the costumes of the commedia dell’arte:

copied from a set of china figures forming part of Eustace Beltane’s collection. Lord Cronshaw was Harlequin; Beltane was Punchinello; Mrs Mallaby matched him as Pulcinella; the Davidsons were Pierrot and Pierette; and Miss Courtenay, of course, was Columbine.[4]

Mr Harley Quin himself subsequently appears in two further short stories: ‘The Love Detectives’ and ‘The Harlequin Tea Set’ (both published posthumously in 1992), the latter was the last short story Christie ever wrote.

Mr Satterthwaite went on to make cameos in Three Act Tragedy (1935) and the novella ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’, which was included in Murder in the Mews (1937).

Other characters and themes that may be recognised in later works include Aspasia Glen from ‘The Dead Harlequin’. Glen was based on the American monologist Ruth Draper (1884–1956) and was developed further in the form of Carlotta Adams, who featured in the 1933 novel Lord Edgware Dies. Moreover, the idea of life not being one’s own, as expressed in ‘The Man from the Sea’, is echoed in Christie’s novel Towards Zero (1944). In the former she wrote:

You take your life today and perhaps, some five, six, seven years hence, someone will go to death or disaster simply for lack of your presence in a given spot or place. It may be a runaway horse coming down a street that swerved aside at the sight of you and so fails to trample a child that is playing in the gutter … You say your life is your own … but can you dare to ignore the chance that you are taking part in a gigantic drama under the orders of a divine Producer? Your cue may not come till the end of the play – it may be totally unimportant, a mere walking-on part, but upon it may hang the issues of the play if you do not give the cue to another player. The whole edifice may crumple.

While in the latter, after his attempted suicide, the nurse tells Angus MacWhirter:

It may be just by being somewhere – not doing anything – just by being at a certain place at a certain time … but you might just – just walk along a street some day and just by doing that accomplish something terribly important – perhaps even without knowing what it was.

[1] Christie 2011, p. 432.

[2] Christie 2011, p. 432.

[3] ‘The Mysterious Mr Quin’, Agatha Christie, n.d., https://www.agathachristie.com/stories/the-myserious-mr-quin [accessed 10 July 2026].

[4] Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories (London: Harper Collins, 2013), p. 11.